Chamber and committees

Under the Social Work (Scotland) Act 1968 local authorities and Health and Social Care Partnerships have a duty to assess the social care support needs of people and decide, in light of that assessment, to arrange suitable services, if required.

While the Scottish Government has overall responsibility for health and social care support policy in Scotland, it is for local Integration Joint Boards (IJBs) to ensure that social care support services are in place to provide their population with the appropriate support in the right place and at the right time.

The Scottish Government do not hold information centrally in relation to the level of support packages provided.

The Scottish Government does not hold data which would answer this question.

However, data up to 2022-23 on Social Care eligibility and waiting times is publicly available at Local Authority level via the following weblink:

Social care: eligibility criteria and waiting times Scotland 2022-2023 - gov.scot

Data showing the time waited between completion of a community care assessment and delivery of a new personal care service in the final quarter of each financial year can be found in the ‘Waiting times new personal care clients’ worksheet of the Excel workbook accompanying the publication.

However there are a number of caveats with these data:

• The data return template sent to LAs is aggregate, and only grouped time periods are collected. Therefore it is not possible to calculate an average waiting time – only a distribution of time periods is possible.
• Many local authorities have reported difficulty in providing the information asked for in this data collection and therefore not all data is available for every year.
• Due to the gaps in the Local Authority level data, we cannot effectively aggregate to Health Board. Completeness levels for each LA can be found within the ‘Data completeness’ tab of the Excel workbook accompanying the publication.

Due to the issues faced in collecting this data from LAs and due to the lack of completeness, this data collection has been paused while we explore alternative methods of obtaining higher quality information on eligibility criteria and the length of time people wait for services. Therefore the most recent data available is for
2022-23.

The Scottish Government does not hold full data with regards to waiting times and there are no national targets. However, a maximum wait time of 6 weeks is recommended in critical cases.

Data up to 2022-23 on Social Care eligibility and waiting times is publicly available at Local Authority level via the following weblink:

Social care: eligibility criteria and waiting times Scotland 2022-2023 - gov.scot

Data showing the time waited between referral first contact and completion of a community care assessment service in the final quarter of each financial year can be found in the ‘waiting times new clients’ tab of the Excel workbook which accompanies the publication.

Under the Social Work (Scotland) Act 1968 local authorities and Health and Social Care Partnerships have a duty to assess the social care support needs of people and decide, in light of that assessment, to arrange suitable services, if required.

While the Scottish Government has overall responsibility for health and social care support policy in Scotland, it is for local Integration Joint Boards (IJBs) to ensure that social care support services are in place to provide their population with the appropriate support in the right place and at the right time.

We understand the pressures faced and have invested a record £21.7 billion in health and social care in 2025-26, which includes almost £2.2 billion for social care and integration.

Data on the total number of care hours planned for delivery is not held centrally.

Data on the number of hours of care at home funded by Health and Social Care Partnerships in Scotland is published annually by Public Health Scotland and can be found via the dashboard on following weblink:

Care at Home Statistics for Scotland: Support and services funded by Health and Social Care Partnerships in Scotland 2023/2024 - Care at Home Statistics for Scotland - Publications - Public Health Scotland

Data are available for 2018-19 to 2023-24.

Data showing the number of hours for people assessed but yet to be delivered, and for number of additional hours of care to be delivered to those already receiving a care package is published by Public Health Scotland at local authority level. This can be found via the dashboard on following weblink:

Overview - People requiring a Social Care assessment and Care at Home services - Care at home - Social and community care - Healthcare system - Public Health Scotland

I can advise Parliament that the Scottish Government’s £30 million Electric Vehicle (EV) Infrastructure Fund has now been fully allocated to local authorities to enable them to work in partnership with the private sector to attract matched investment and deliver approximately 6,000 additional public charge points across Scotland by 2030.

Scotland currently has over 6,800 public charge points and is on track to meet its commitment of enabling approximately 24,000 additional public EV charge points by 2030, the majority of which will be funded and delivered by the private sector.

This fund prioritises the delivery of new public EV charging infrastructure in those parts of Scotland less likely to benefit from stand-alone private sector investment in public charging infrastructure.

I can further advise that through the fund, the Scottish Government has provided the North of Scotland partnership, consisting of Aberdeen, Aberdeenshire, Highland and Moray councils, with over £7 million to transform charging infrastructure across the North of Scotland.

Our investment has enabled this partnership to leverage over £4.9 million of additional matched private sector investment over the next three years to ensure that drivers of electric vehicles in the North of Scotland experience the availability, accessibility and reliability of public EV charging they need and deserve.

The funding committed to date in respect of the circa £100 million extra investment to address long waits is shown in Table 1 broken down by health board and in Table 2 broken down by specialty; this is over and above other funding to improve waiting times.

Table 1.

I wrote to the Economy and Fair Work Committee on 25 June 2024 to confirm that a market testing exercise for Glasgow Prestwick Airport was underway. Scottish Ministers’ longstanding position is that the airport should be returned to the private sector at the appropriate time and opportunity. This must be to an organisation with the commitment and capability to operate businesses directly relevant to GPA.

Any decision to sell GPA must represent value for money for taxpayers and be informed by what is right for the long-term success of the business and its contribution to the local and Scottish economy.

This process is continuing and I will update Parliament when a significant development has been made.

The Agenda for Change pay deal focuses on rewarding staff such as nurses, midwives, paramedics, porters and others for the dedication and effort they provide to NHS Scotland. Delivering a renewed and stronger NHS is a key commitment for the Scottish Government and at the heart of that are our hard-working healthcare staff who we want to ensure feel valued and rewarded.

The Scottish Government recognise that workforce and pay costs driven by a period of prolonged high inflation are now contributing to significant budget pressures across health and social care, the wider Scottish Government budget and the whole of the public sector. This Government has been clear that the extent of these challenges will not be addressed in a single year and we will continue to make the tough choices necessary to support sustainable public finances, whilst also seeking to minimise the impact on frontline services as far as possible.

Local authorities are public bodies and can only place certain people on their allocation schemes or waiting lists for housing, this is set out in legislation, and immigration status is a consideration. There is however no legislation requiring Registered Social Landlords (RSLs) to consider immigration status when allocating social housing. RSLs are independent organisations regulated by the Scottish Housing Regulator who must make their decisions to allocate housing within the law and according to their own policies. However a RSL would discuss rent, affordability, income and benefit entitlement with any prospective tenant, before making an offer.